142 – A Number Fit For A Beginning:
After the tragic falling of the water tank, we continued working with the families of Cantagalo, Pavão and Pavãozinho. With the rise in drugs, corruption and violence in that region, families were begging for a day care where they could safely leave their children and be able to go to their jobs in peace.
It was then when we defined our line of action: prevention. We would give start to meticulous and patient work, taking care of the children from their birth, offering the best education possible, so that when they got older they could bring real change to the favela.
The actions were to give the same social opportunities that children who lived in the paved streets had, and an excellence in schooling levels, so that these children would have the skills to compete for jobs and universities in the future.
From 1989 to 1991, we start an intense search for a property. It was at that time where we came upon the house at 142 Saint Roman Street, where an office of the newspaper “O Pasquim” had once been located, but at that time was currently taken by a group of people with no resources, and the property was in very poor living conditions.
Out of generosity, the cartoonist Jaguar made the property available for the start of our Day Care, as long as we succeeded in removing the property invasors. We spent years trying to help everyone who was living there, giving houses to the homeless ones, taking those who were sick to hospitals, paying travelling fees for those who wished to go back to their home state in northeastern Brazil. After all this was done, we started rebuilding the property, and the process of finding and training the team of professionals who were to work at the facility.
In August 18th, 1991, the Meninos de Luz Day Care was inaugurated with the support of what was at time the CBIA – “Centro Brasileiro para a Infância e Adolescência” (Brazilian center for childhood and adolescence), and 100% of our staff was comprised of community residents.
Later, the ASSESPA – “Associação Educacional São Paulo Apóstolo” (St. Paul Apostle’s Educational Association), owner of that property, through Ronald Levingson, gave us the house on loan.
The directing board of the day care, was comprised of the following volunteers: Yolanda Maltaroni, in charge of administrative and pedagogical supervision; Isabella Maltaroni in charge of pedagogical direction; Elza Salek in charge of the pedagogical coordination; and Guilherme Maltarone in charge of the administrative direction.
Today, that same property is still the house where our nursery, preschool, kinder-garden, kitchen and science lab are located.
